


They’ll Tear Us Apart if You Give Them the Chance (Run Baby, Run)

by ambitiousbutrubbish



Series: I Buy My Way to Talk to God so He Can Live With What I'm Not [2]
Category: Young Avengers (Comics)
Genre: M/M, Supervillains!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-18
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-12-31 03:53:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12123954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambitiousbutrubbish/pseuds/ambitiousbutrubbish
Summary: All Kate actually wanted was to put a stop to some of her father’s more questionable business practices. She never really meant to end up on a team of baby supervillains.AKA: The evil!Billy/Teddy sequel.AKA: Peer pressure works, kids!





	They’ll Tear Us Apart if You Give Them the Chance (Run Baby, Run)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to everyone for giving me the time to write my self-indulgent orchestra nonsense! And now as promised I will return to being easily talked into writing stuff that other people actually want to read about. 
> 
> When will my linear structure come back from the war?

Kate never actually expected it to go this far.  


All she had wanted to do was use her inside knowledge and access to stop some of her father’s more questionable business practices. To do some ultimate good in this world by stopping some bad people, even if it meant she had to do something drastic in the meantime; like bug a boardroom or blow up a building. To be totally honest with herself, she’d kind of hoped it would come to that. Which is why she had tracked down Billy, Teddy and Eli in the first place.

They weren’t hard to find. They don’t advertise themselves like they did for a while there, when they ran with a teenaged Kang. But they don’t put a lot of effort into hiding themselves either, and Kate really only had to wait around for the next pro-mutant rally and catch Billy and Teddy in the crowd where they couldn’t disappear. 

Billy’s costume doesn’t hide his face, but without it it’s strangely forgettable. Kate had heard from the rumour mill that he can change reality itself, so that is probably on purpose. She had spotted him three times before she actually managed to approach - if she was distracted for even a second she would suddenly forget that she had found him, but eventually she got a good, clean run in his direction. She hadn’t recognised Teddy next to him, because at that point she had only ever seen him in his skrull form. But while she was watching, Billy had taken his hand and given him a look that she couldn’t mistake.

They’d taken her to meet Eli soon after, and they all easily agreed to taking up her cause. And suddenly they were a team. 

Unfortunately for her - from a purely enjoyment angle - at the time they had sworn off flashy violence completely, so she didn’t get to blow anything up for a little over a year. Though they did make copious use of secret recoding devices to blackmail her father into paying better wages, and then extorted him for millions. It was all so much fun that by the end of it, Kate decided to stick around for the next fight.

And now two years on, she’s out the back of one of those hobby tourist farms outside of New York, watching Billy and Teddy argue over what to do with Teddy’s new magic sword that apparently lets him rule over all of space.

“You could stop everything.” Billy says, frustration and desperation clear. “You could end mutant oppression. All you’d have to do is order it.”

“I don’t want to be a space fascist, Billy.” Teddy replies, and there is a hint of pleading in his voice. “We’re not the Empire.”

“It’s not fascism if you’re doing the right thing!” Billy argues, and Kate is about to step in because _that’s_ a slippery slope statement if ever she heard one, but Eli grabs her arm and shakes his head. 

“Billy, don’t you see? This is exactly what Magneto wanted from you.”

“It’s not!” Billy says, and he’s shouting now, a blue glow pulsing around his edges. He’s given her every reason to trust him, but Kate is beginning to feel the slightest twinge of nervousness, and she pats her pocket where she keeps a couple of tranquillising darts just in case of emergencies. Teddy appears unfazed, and he steps towards Billy, hands up and palms open. “This isn’t your power-hungry grandfather trying to make you change reality. You were _meant_ to have this. You were _meant_ to do this. You were born to be king.”

“Well I didn’t vote for him.” Interrupts a voice beside Kate, and everyone in the field turns whiplash fast to look at Eli.

“What?” Billy asks, startled back into his normal tone, and the magic that was building in the air vanishes. And whatever he and Teddy went through when they disappeared from Earth for a few hours must have been exhausting, because the reference flies right over Billy’s head.

“You can’t weird supreme executive power just ‘cause some watery tart threw a sword at you.” Eli says. His face is blank, but his posture carries the same underlying edge that Kate is feeling. And his shoulders are curled over, like he’s a little embarrassed he knows the quote off-hand.

Kate sure is. “Help, help, I’m being repressed.” She picks up, at exactly the same time as Cassie, and they turn to grin at each other.

There’s a cough from behind them that Tommy that does’t even try to conceal his “nerds” in, and then a moo, and they all turn around to see Jonas absentmindedly petting one of the farm’s cows, seemingly utterly unaware of their brief conflict. 

Billy starts to laugh, and almost immediately they all join in. Teddy somehow sheathes his sword in midair without any further protest.

********************

Billy and Teddy are more than happy to talk about how they first met.

“It was love at first sight.” Billy starts.

“Apart from the electrocution.” Teddy replies, with a worryingly besotted grin considering he’s basically implying attempted murder. Grievous bodily harm at the least.

“To be fair,” Billy finishes, with a dopy smile of his own, “I didn’t actually see you until after that.”

It’s an exchange that clearly has been choreographed after many retellings, but Kate thinks it’s sweet.

But they won’t talk about _Before_ ; about that short time between leaving behind the Brotherhood of Mutants and Kate joining them, about the time when it was just them and Eli and Nate. Them and Eli and _Kang_. 

So she gets Eli drunk; not an easy task, because Eli goes from barely-noticeable-but-loose-lipped drunk to blackout-drunk in the space of about a mouthful of beer. It’s a fine line to tread to get information out of him, but Kate has always performed better with long odds.

“Nate came back to kill the Avengers.” He starts, and Kate knows that, she watched the news. But knowing what happened is not the same as knowing _why_. “Not because he really wanted them dead, but because he saw the future and he wanted to change it.” He says it in a rush, with the desperate conviction of someone who believes what they’re saying, but at the same time knows it isn’t true. “He saw how many people died because of Kang’s fight with the Avengers, and he came back to kill them before they could ever start.”

Frankly, Kate is a little surprised. From the time she’s spent with Billy, Teddy and Eli, unprovoked murder isn’t really their style. “What did you guys get out of it?” She asks. 

“Billy and Teddy felt betrayed by the Avengers. Still do. Torture isn’t something you get over easily, even if it was without their knowledge. And that’s still an _if_.” Kate knows _that_ story. If Billy and Teddy’s favourite story is how they met, then their learn favourite - apart from the one they won’t tell - is Billy’s capture and imprisonment by the Avengers. Kate had thought it admirable that they never tried to actually kill any of the superheroes who had been involved, but clearly that was not always the case.

Apparently reading her mind, Eli continues. “But they won’t talk about it, because they’re ashamed of how far they went; working with someone like Kang, who they don’t respect. Nate was a nice guy. It was easy to pretend that he wasn’t going to become who he would. We all liked him, at least a little. But eventually his future caught up with him.”

Kate knows that part of the story best - the young-and-future Kang hatching a plan to blow up all of New York city to catch the Avenger’s base in the blast, and his teammates turning against him and shoving him through one of Billy’s portals, presumably to his original time.

“And you?” Kate asks.

“I just wanted people to know about my grandfather, and I didn’t really care how the message got out.” Eli shrugs. “Nate gave me a platform no one could ignore.”

********************

It’s generally agreed that Jonas has just enough of the Vision in his programming to offset Nate’s more murderous tendencies. 

Jonas had been Nate’s grand plan: the android body of the Vision, with his own consciousness shoved inside. Nate had planned to use the fact that Jonas looked like an Avenger to have him sneak into their base, and then have him self-destruct while inside. The blast would have taken all of New York out along with it.

But something of the Vision had remained in the android’s core, and Jonas had turned himself in to the Avengers when he was on their doorstep. 

Billy, Teddy and Eli had gotten wind of the plan, and forced Nate back to where he came from. And then they had gone to rescue Jonas from the Avengers. 

Kate hadn’t known about him before she joined up, and even then it takes weeks before they meet. Jonas is a secret, hidden away in Billy and Teddy’s main hideout-house. And for the most part he watches over the mutant kids who find refuge there. Kate originally thought the arrangement was due to the three of them wanting to keep Jonas as a secret weapon, but the truth came out quickly enough - the Avengers want to restore the original Vision programming.

It’s a conflict with no easy answer. The body belongs to the Vision, none of them can deny that. Nate stole it, and forced his own brainwaves inside. And the Avengers are not wrong to want their friend and comrade returned to them.

But Jonas has just as much of a right to exist, and that is what Billy, Teddy and Eli are defending. And Kate fights for them, so she fights for him too.

Even if, sometimes, she isn’t entirely sure that he’s on their side.

No one knows if the problem is that Nate’s programming wasn’t quite perfect, or that the Vision’s consciousness had somehow transcended the laws of robotics (and considering Billy regularly transcends the laws of nature, Kate doesn’t find that hard to believe). But either way, sometimes Jonas is more someone else than he is himself.

It’s not little things. It wouldn’t be a problem if it was just the occasional slip. For the most part Jonas is somewhat distant, but otherwise content to play babysitter. And he commands such loyalty from the kids that more than once Billy and Teddy have been forced to hide out in their room because they questioned him. But every now and then Jonas’ face goes blank and his eyes dark and when everything snaps back he’s a completely different being. 

The first time it happens, they’re in the middle of what Kate had thought was a perfect plan (that she had come up with it was incidental to its brilliance). Because she knows that Hawkeye has been keeping an eye on her, and so she figures it would’t be too difficult to get him to meet her somewhere to “talk”. And from there it can’t be too difficult for Billy or Teddy to nab him. They both have kidnapping experience from their time with the Brotherhood. Sometimes Kate hears about what they did for Magneto before, and she wonders if she’s fallen in with some bad people. But then she remembers that they were the only ones to take her seriously, and actually _do_ something to help.

What they plan to do with Hawkeye once they have him was a little more uncertain, but they figure that having an Avenger available to question can only be a net positive. But their plan never eventuates, even though it all starts off so smoothly. Because as Hawkeye makes his way to the prearranged meeting place, Jonas phases in and warns him. 

When Kate corners him about it later, Jonas claims his memory banks for that time are sealed, and inaccessible to him. And he looks so disturbed by the idea that Kate doesn’t push him further. 

And when Jonas seems to switch off and be replaced again, they’re just as unprepared. 

The group that gathers outside the courthouse can clearly be heard from the café where they've decided to meet. And even though their chanting is unorganised and distant, Kate can tell by the strained look on Teddy’s face, and the way his finger tapping on the table keeps shifting back and forth to a skrull claw, that they’re shouting something not entirely pleasant. 

Jonas doesn’t drink or eat, but he’d tagged along anyway. Kate doesn’t really understand what he is getting out of it when all he does is sit and listen, but he speaks up now. “Why don’t we just kill them?” And when Kare looks across at him his eyes look _wrong_ , and angry.

Billy turns to Teddy with a shrug, taking in his tight posture. “It’s a fair idea.” He says, and the green is already starting to spread up Teddy’s arm from his one shifted finger.

But Jonas continues. “There is an 86% chance of civilian casualties in surrounding buildings, but that is a manageable risk.” And everything stops in its place, except for Jonas rising from his seat. 

Billy snaps out of it first, and makes a desperate lunge across the table - mushing Eli’s half-eaten burger into his shirt in the process - to grab Jonas’ wrist, and then there’s a pop and they’re both gone. Teddy immediately pulls his phone out of his pocket and rips a hole in his jeans in the process, and he hurriedly dials Billy’s number.

While he’s waiting for the call to connect, Eli leans towards her and carefully puts his hands where the food pushed off the table by Billy’s dive hasn’t landed in the booth. “That was Nate.” He says, and Kate is suddenly very glad she was a late addition to the team. 

But even with his lapses in judgement and snaps in programming, she’s still determined to help them protect Jonas’ right to exist.

********************

Cassie could easily be the main character in a classic tale of overprotective parents trying to stop their child from following in their footsteps along a dangerous path, and pushing them down one far darker. It’s just unlucky that in her case, her father is a superhero. 

Kate is the one who finds her, eyes wide and frozen like a deer in headlights, with one leg swung out of the window of her father’s house. After a breath Cassie grins at her and tries to fling her other leg and herself out and drop to the ground. but Kate is faster, and she grabs her by the arm and yanks her back inside. And then suddenly Cassie _shrinks_ , and Kate knows exactly who she is.

They say that the Ant-Man had been a thief, before; not the original hero, but his successor. Kate knows a little more, because she admires Scott Lang - a criminal, but for a good reason; who did everything he could to save his little girl and give her a good life, even if _everything_ wasn’t strictly always legal. And Cassie tells her at a coffee shop the next day that she took up thievery herself because she was bored.

Not entirely, of course. But boredom is a factor. Kate can’t exactly _blame_ Cassie’s parents for wanting to keep her safe from the rest of the world - even disregarding her dad, her step-dad is a cop, and Kate can imagine the kinds of things he’s seen that would make him want to protect her so badly. Kate’s probably _been_ the kinds of things he’d want to protect her from.

So Cassie’s parents kept her safe and loved and _bored_ ;. Like a prized show-dog, a beloved part of the family, but never allowed to have any _fun_. And she went to school and she came home and she sat on the couch under her parent’s watchful eyes and she tried to pretend like she wasn’t dying inside, like she felt like there was any purpose in her life. 

Until the day her dad messed up, and she got ahold of a Pym Particle. And everything changed.

Because she’d always been such a good girl, always done what she was told, so it wasn’t difficult to convince her step-dad to give her a few hours alone every day. She’s basically an adult now, she argued. She can be trusted. And she trained and she trained until she could shrink and grow as naturally as breathing. And nothing could stop her.

Her dad was a thief before he was a hero, and Cassie remembers how much it helped her and her mom. She wants to help people too, but her family can’t find out. She understands; her dad and her step-dad do their jobs so she doesn’t ever have to put herself in danger. They don’t want the life they’ve had for her. But Cassie doesn’t want to live without having done everything she can to keep people safe.

So she had taken her stepdad’s laptop while he was sleeping, and she’d done her research and she’d found companies under investigation for ripping off their employees. And she’d stolen it all back. 

Criminality isn’t criminality if it’s for a good cause. 

Cassie only wants to protect people. And Kate is sure they can work with that.

********************

When she had first decided to do this whole thing, Kate had cloned her father’s phone. Or; she’d paid some shady hacker she met in one of her neighbourhood’s very few remaining internet cafés to clone her father’s phone. She gets his texts, which are mostly boring or gross. But she also reads his emails, and very occasionally something comes through. Like the fact that he has set up a meeting with one of the local gangs to get help in bullying some of the local store owners into giving up real estate. Stopping that is exactly the reason Kate sought out Billy, Teddy and Eli in the first place, and it doesn’t take any real convincing to get them to join her and Cassie in going after them.

And Teddy is usually enough, when dealing with humans. They send him down the shady alleyway first, all big and green and _sharp_ , and even at a distance it’s easy for Kate to hear the way that the conversation just _stops_ when Teddy steps out of the shadows. Normally this would be about the time that they would be quickly passed by a bunch of running people booking it out of the alley, but instead the voices start again, one man saying “you know, I’ve always really wanted to punch a skrull”, and instead it’s _Billy_ slipping around them and into the darkness. Kate looks at Cassie and Eli and rolls her eyes, before following at a much more leisurely pace. 

It’s barely even a fight, which is disappointing. Punching Teddy even at his most human-shaped is not the best idea. He keeps his muscles _hard_ , and the man who had followed through on his statement is off to the side and nursing a clearly broken hand. Four of the others have very sensibly frozen, and their eyes dart between Billy and Teddy standing in front of them with their arms crossed like they’re wishing they had cyanide tablets right now so they don’t have to deal with whatever is going to happen soon. But the fifth stands his ground, raises his hands, and shoots a very poorly aimed fireball out from the thin air between them. It blasts off down the empty alleyway and out into the street. 

For a moment it seems as though the flames have somehow missed every last one of them, despite the fact that they’re all crammed into a very small space. But then the stunned silence is replaced by a quiet _whoosh_ , and the left sleeve of Eli’s costume goes up in flames. It’s a thick material, designed for heavy wear and tear - not exactly fire-retardant, but enough to stop him being immediately hurt. Instead Eli snarls, pushes his way between Billy and Teddy and stalks over to the firestarter, standing motionless with his eyes wide and afraid. He hardly reacts at all when Eli slips behind him and grabs hold of him around the neck. 

But when he burns with his own fire; _then_ he starts to scream. 

********************

A short time later, Kate is slumped over her dining table, cheek pressed against the cool wood as she tries to keep her eyes open. Her apartment has quickly become their unofficial hang-out/hideout, particularly after Cassie moved in; with Eli still determined to keep what they do a secret from his family, and Jonas the only one allowed in any of Billy and Teddy’s houses, it because the choice by default.

Cassie is absentmindedly patting her hair from her own seat at the opposite end of the table; which is very nice, but it’s also really not helping Kate in her efforts to not fall asleep. Billy and Teddy are sprawled out all over each other on the couch, and doing an admirable job of mostly keeping their hands off each other, considering how worried Billy can get if anyone so much as thinks about touching Teddy in an unfriendly way. Jonas hovers quietly in the corner. And Eli has taken the spare armchair. He picks up the remote to flick the TV on, and his arm still smells distinctly like burnt hair and singed flesh.

Kate had fallen asleep on the couch last night watching some boring documentary on the history of archery - the kind of show she’s always felt she should _care_ more about, given her weapon of choice, but she’s never managed to sit through a whole program. Eli only watches a few moments of the channel before he skips to the next, and then starts cycling though every station Kate’s father’s money could buy a subscription for. As he flips passed the news channel, they catch the end of a report: “Magneto’s grandson has rejoined the Brotherhood of Mutants.” 

Kate’s head shoots up so fast that there’s a sharp stab of pain in her neck, but her whimper of pain is barely audible even to her own ears, under Billy and Teddy’s shouts to turn the channel back. 

“Yeah, I’m doing it.” Eli says all in a rush, but by the time the TV actually manages to respond to him, there is a picture of a surfing bird on the screen instead. He starts changing through channels as quickly as he can, but even with as much money as Kate spends on her cable and subscriptions, they see nothing but soap operas and game shows cycling passed. 

After a few moments, Billy croaks “stop”, and Eli goes back down a channel. And the screen is half filled with Billy’s face. Only, not. It’s exactly the same, and yet somehow it’s all wrong. Kate can’t help but think that it’s a pretty messed up way for Billy to discover he has an identical twin. Or possibly a clone.

They’ve missed the start of the report, but luckily the program they’ve settled on this time seems to be more a talk show than the news, and they don’t immediately move on to the next story. “This isn’t the first time Wiccan has been seen since parting with Magneto for reasons unknown, but it is the first time he’s been spotted near known Brotherhood hotspots.” The man on the screen says. “And it’s also the first time in years that he’s been seen without his skrull partner. What do you think happened to _him_ , Suzie?” 

He turns to his female cohost, and she shrugs. “We all know what skrulls are, David.” She replies. “They’re not human, and they can’t be trusted to be rational, peaceful beings. I think that he would’ve had to put him down.”

Jonas is the first to speak, from where he’s drifted silently next to Eli’s armchair. “Turn it off.” He says, and when Eli doesn’t move he reaches down slowly and does it himself. 

Every head in the room turns to look at Billy, but he’s staring determinedly down at his own knees and avoiding everyone’s eyes. Next to him, Teddy looks _terrified_ , but Kate is sure his worry has nothing to do with himself. And eventually, Billy finds his voice. “I’d never do that to my hair.” He says, barely more audibly than a mumble, and Teddy finally makes the little distressed noise he’s been holding back. He puts both his arms around Billy and pulls him close. Billy doesn’t make a sound, but he puts his head on Teddy’s chest, directly over his heart, and he wraps one of his hands around the wrist that isn’t hidden under his body.

And it’s Kate’s apartment, but she leaves with Cassie, Eli and Jonas to give them some time alone.

********************

Tommy finds them a week and a half later. 

Billy’s still jittery, unhappy when Teddy leaves his side, like he’s afraid that someone’s going to hunt him down like an animal if he’s alone. But he seems to have found some acceptance of the fact that there is a copy of him wandering around somewhere. Kate supposes it’s not that unusual. After all, everyone is supposed to have doppelgängers out there. 

But opening the door and seeing Tommy’s face staring back at her, it’s not the same. Because they’re not just similar. It’s _Billy’s_ face in the doorway. If she didn’t know better because he’s standing with Teddy trying to cook breakfast in the kitchenette behind her, she’d think Billy had had a brain fade and accidentally magically changed his hair colour. 

Tommy doesn’t say a word, just pushes past her and into her apartment. Kate puts out a hand to stop him, but he’s already gone before she’s even raises it above her hip. She turns to see Tommy and Billy standing almost nose-to-nose, and Teddy halfway to his skrull form but holding back because of Billy’s hand around his wrist. Eli and Cassie have only just started to react to the new presence and Jonas is off babysitting the mutant kids, but Kate is still certain that between them they can easily take their intruder.

“We really are identical twins.” Tommy says, breaking his silence, and Billy grimaces. 

“How did you find us?” He asks, and his voice is remarkably steady.

Tommy scoffs. “You think Magneto doesn’t keep tabs on you?”

Teddy lets out a growl from deep in his throat that doesn’t sound human, and Tommy looks up for the first time. “Easy, big guy.” He says with a smirk. “He’d never come after you guys. He’s scared of your boy here.”

“Who are you?” Billy asks, as if no other conversation had happened.

Tommy holds eye contact with Teddy for a few beats, before tearing his gaze away. “Tommy Shepherd. Only biological son of Frank and Mary Shepherd. But also apparently not.” He opens his hands at hip-height, palms forward, and smiles lopsidedly. It does not reach his eyes.

Billy doesn’t soften his face or his tone. Kate may have no particular love for Magneto, but she admires how strong and collected Billy is as an interrogator, and she can only imagine they have him to thank for that. “Why are you here?”

The grin falls from Tommy’s face. “Our illustrious grandfather broke me out of juvie a month ago.” He starts. “He said it wasn’t right, keeping family apart. But I figured him out pretty quickly.” He pauses, and Billy grunts a go on noise. “I hadn’t exactly been lying low. I vaporised my high school. People died. It was all very tragic. I didn’t actually kill anyone on purpose, I thought they’d all left, but still. If he had wanted to find me, he could have done it a long time ago. But he didn’t need me then, because he had you. And I don’t appreciate being someone’s second choice.”

Billy barely hesitates. “I would have come for you, if I’d known.” He says, and for the first time there’s a hint of vulnerability sneaking into his voice.

“I wouldn’t have.” Tommy replies with a shrug. “But maybe you’re the good twin. The budding supervillain, splashed all over the news. Wouldn't that be funny.” 

********************

It takes some time for Billy to figure it out. 

To be fair, the idea that he has a set of parents that aren’t his parents, but also _are_ , is frankly ridiculous. But it’s the only thing that makes sense. Somehow. 

Tommy wasn’t lying about his parents, that much is fact. It wasn’t difficult to find evidence. Which means that somewhere out there, Billy has parents, too. Kate hears him talking about it with Teddy once, when she and Cassie come back from a shopping trip. They're huddled together in the kitchen, and she has to shuffle closer to hear their murmuring. 

“There’s no point trying to find them.” Billy says, and his words quaver at the edges. “They wouldn’t want me. Not like this.”

“They would.” Teddy replies, fierce even at a whisper. Billy is turned away from the doorway, but Teddy’s hands wipe at his face and Kate does’t need to see him to know that he is crying. Suddenly she is deeply uncomfortable. “Of course they would, Billy. Anyone would be a fool not to want you. You’re perfect.”

Kate backs away quietly and looks across at Cassie, who has tears in her own eyes. Silently they agree to leave them be, and sneak away into Kate’s bedroom.

By the time they decide it’s safe to try the kitchen again, the ice cream in one of the bags has melted, some of it spilling out of the cheap packaging and onto her carpet. When Eli sees it a week later he rolls his eyes in exasperation, but Kate is happy to wear the blame. 

********************

Billy wants to go to war with Magneto. 

Kate isn’t as keen, but Billy supports her ongoing crusade to take down her father, so she doesn’t think it’s right to do any less. Cassie and Eli agree, and Jonas for the most part will go along with any plan. Tommy looks like he relishes the prospect.

To Kate’s shock, it’s Teddy who talks him out of it, who reminds him of their promise after Nate; to not go after anyone who was fighting for the same cause as them. It’s not like him to say no to Billy. Usually, Billy says jump and Teddy asks how high. Usually, Billy says he wants someone dead, and they’re already shuddering out their last breath. Kate remembers when she first met them, how sad she had thought it was that Teddy seemed so much more in love with Billy than he was with him. 

But then she saw Teddy get knocked out of the sky by a rogue skrull and hit the ground hard, totally unconscious. And Billy had gone nuclear; sparks had crackled and popped across his skin, and his magic spread like veins under it as the air grew hotter and hotter and harder to breath and just as Kate was beginning to feel lightheaded, the skrull looping elegantly through the sky and back down towards them on the ground had _exploded_ , into pieces so small it had drifted down on them as soft as a drizzle. And Billy had grabbed an unconscious Teddy and teleported away.

Kate, Eli and Cassie had been forced to split up and walk across the city to get back to the apartment, all covered in too much blood to take public transport. When she got home, she had found Billy sitting cross-legged on the carpet in the living room, Teddy’s head in his lap. By the time Eli and Cassie arrived too, she’d drunk two cups of coffee and had gotten exactly zero words out of Billy - she hadn’t even managed to coax him into looking up from Teddy’s face, where his hand was stroking gently through his hair. And he didn’t look up when the door opened, or when the aftershocks of his magic dancing over his skin gave Cassie a quick but painful zap when she reached out to touch him. In fact, he barely so much as moved for another 20 minutes, until Teddy’s eyes fluttered open. At which point Billy had let out an audible sob, and Teddy had reached up immediately to his face making comforting noises, before Billy had wrapped his arms tightly around his chest and ported them both away again. 

As he was leaving after washing up, Eli had plucked a tooth out of her hair, and Kate had had to shower for an hour before she started to feel clean again. And then she called a contractor to come by and replace the carpet in the living room that had been stained with blood, because Billy had not cleaned himself or Teddy up.

Kate hasn’t doubted either’s devotion to the other since. It’s sweet, and it’s enviable, but it’s also _scary_. She can’t imagine just utterly giving herself away to someone like they have to each other, and she can’t imagine what either one of them would do if something truly dreadful happened to the other. She’s had boyfriends before, she’s even been a little bit in love one or twice, but nothing like them. Which is why she’s so surprised that Teddy can keep so calm. If anyone kidnapped Eli or Cassie as a baby, she would not be half as rational. 

She asks Teddy about it, when she catches him alone in the kitchen. “I’m not calm.” Teddy says. “If I ever see Magneto again, I’ll kill him. But Billy and I; we can’t go down that path again. That’s not the fight we want to fight.” And he grabs a packet of chips and goes back to whatever stupid racing game he was playing with Eli. 

But even if he’s talked out of going after Magneto, Billy still has fury and pain to burn. And it’s Tommy who offers the solution. He tells them about his time in juvie, and the experiments they performed on him. About how he’d like to get back at them.

A week later, Cassie shrinks down small enough to get passed the lab censors and unlocks the restraints keeping the mutant kids trapped and helpless, and locks any of the staff doors she can find. Then Billy sets fire to the building. It wouldn’t burn well under normal circumstances, too much brick and glass and steel, but Billy’s magic has the flames getting hotter and higher. They all watch as people start pouring out of the building. The mutants they let run passed, but none of the scientists and employees get very far. Kate doesn’t much like killing civilians, but there are always exceptions.

Truthfully, Tommy had told them at the beginning, he could have done this on his own. He’s no stranger to blowing up a building. But Kate had laughed a bitter, angry laugh; Tommy’s description of the way the scientists had treated him fresh in her mind. How they had pumped him full of drugs and pushed him to the limits of his powers, almost vibrating himself apart, his very atoms grinding and scraping against each other in his need to go faster and faster. Pain on a molecular level. How he had almost exploded from the heat of it, burning like he had a sun inside himself. Or a nuclear bomb. And how the rest of the staff had just stood there and watched it happen.

“But then it wouldn’t be such a valuable team bonding experience.” She tells him. And Tommy is one of them, now. 

********************

Billy and Teddy’s house is much nicer than Kate expected. She doesn’t really know why they would hang out at her apartment so often, when they have it to go back to. But she supposes they have all the mutant kids to keep out of harm’s way. They seem to have cleared them out for the visit, anyway. But there’s evidence of them everywhere - a few holes punched in walls, some scorch marks, one table that’s been melted into a really interesting but totally unusable shape. The house is obviously well loved and it’s as clean as can be expected considering, but they clearly have some accidents with mutant newly coming into their powers.

Billy is halfway through a tour of the third bathroom they’ve come across when there’s a loud shrieking noise from outside - like a very large and pissed off bird - and Teddy jogs back to the entrance of the house. Billy sighs as everyone looks at him. “The alarm.” He says, and heads off back the way they came, too. 

They hear the front door slam open, and Billy speeds up. Kate exchanges a look with Cassie, and all five of them hurry after him. They bundle out the door just in time to hear Teddy shout “How _dare_ you come here!” He stalks forward, getting bigger and greener and bulkier as he approaches a figure that suddenly looks as small next to him as Kate does next to the normal, human-looking Teddy. Billy rushes after him, and he catches him high on the arm just before he gets a swing in, and Teddy pauses.

“Calm down, son.” The figure says, and Kate didn’t recognise him out of his uniform, but it’s _Captain America_ , here to tell them to _calm down_ , and Kate makes her own abortive steps towards him, fists clenched, before Eli reaches out to stop her. “We shut it down. We didn’t know.”

“You should have known.” Billy takes over, his grip so tight on Teddy’s arm that Kate can see his white knuckles from where she’s standing. “You should care about us. We’re prisoners, but we’re still human.” Teddy snorts at that, and Kate sees Billy’s shoulders and hand relax, just a little. “Okay, some of us aren’t human. But we’re still sentient beings.”

“And we’re sorry for what happened to you.” Captain America says, and he sounds contrite, but there’s just a hint that he can’t believe that this is a conversation he has to have. “Which is why we’d like to extend an invitation for you guys to join us. Fight with us.” He pauses, like he’s just made the best pitch of all time and is waiting to deliver the knockout blow. “You can still be on the side of good.”

Tommy scoffs, audibly, and for the first time Captain America looks passed Billy and Teddy and at the rest of them, his gaze sliding almost instantly to Jonas hovering at the back. And his complete lack of acknowledgement gives Kate the fury she needs to speak. “We _are_ good.” She says through clenched teeth. “We’re just a lot less self-righteous about it.” Billy and Teddy turn around and beam at her. “You can go now.” She says, confidence rising. “Or we’ll make you.”

And Captain America looks genuinely shocked, but he leaves without a complaint. Billy and Teddy collapse against each other even as Teddy shrinks back down, though he keeps his skin green while someone might see him. Billy tucks his face into his neck and just breathes, and Teddy rubs one big, clawed hand gently up and down his back. Eli puts his hand on Kate’s shoulder and squeezes, and she can hear Cassie’s “good job.” clearly from behind herself.

And Kate feels like they could take on the world. 

They’re a _team_.

**Author's Note:**

> There are two reasons why I have stuck with the Original Flavour YA here and didn’t include YA 2.0:
> 
> 1\. Apart from the inclusion of David, Noh-Varr and America - and the very brief acknowledgement (that is very quickly forgotten again but whatever I’m not bitter) of how crappy and unfair it is that Teddy is pushing aside his own hurt and loss to help everyone else - I don’t really like anything about vol 2. So I tend to skirt around its existence.  
> 
> 
> 2\. For the same reason I wrote Nate out of this fic very quickly: with Loki being Loki and Noh-Varr kinda being all over the place in the past, there’s too much of a potential to write the 2.0 characters as genuinely evil, rather than just as good kids who have pushed too far. And that’s not really the story I’m telling - I’m definitely aiming more for the well-intended extremist type.
> 
> So I’m not saying _no_ , but I am saying probably not. Unless I can think of a way to stop it from getting too dark. But hey, if you’ve got some ideas, I’d love to hear them.


End file.
